‘You’re my wife, and you’re going to stay my wife,’ he said smoothly. ‘We’ve had good times together, Greta, and don’t forget that. What else, as I’ve said to you before, what else do you want from me?’
‘Maybe happiness,’ she said.
His eyes were narrowing. ‘What’s got into you? What’s started you taking this slant on me? Why suddenly, you haven’t worried about it before? Why this aggrieved act lately?’
‘Maybe something to do with that Grayson girl,’ she said.
‘That poor kid,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That poor kid.’
He exhaled a cloud of cigar-smoke slowly, watched it curl above her pale hair.
‘She got so infatuated with you she had to go and kill herself, very flattering for you. But what do you think I felt when I read all that stuff in the newspapers? That stuff you said at the inquest, you being so modest and so attractive, but forcing yourself to admit it, that some damned girl fell for you, and because you don’t bother to look at her, she goes and takes poison. What do you think I feel about that? I’m telling you, Ray, one of these days you won’t be quite so eager to drop one of these girls. And I won’t ever see you again.’
‘You’re out of your mind,’ he said. ‘I tell you I couldn’t help it; it wasn’t because she was infatuated with me, but because she was that sort of girl. I tell you, I couldn’t help it at all.’
‘You’re lying, Ray, you rat,’ she said.
She was smiling softly as she said it, but he stepped back as if she had struck him a physical blow. She waited, seeing the malicious glitter in his eyes, and the colour rise to his soft, pale face.
‘I don’t like anyone to call me that,’ he said, his voice was thick. ‘I don’t like it from anybody, not even you, Greta.’
He moved away slowly back to his desk, drawing deeply on his cigar. She saw his eyes looking at her speculatively through the cigar-smoke. She stood quite still. She didn’t move after him.
‘Maybe it’ll be a bit of a warning to you, Ray,’ she said. ‘The Grayson girl was the last straw. I’m warning you, keep your private life private, don’t let it get public so that I can feel the few friends I have laughing at me behind my back.’
He smiled at her, as the cloud of cigar-smoke cleared, and she could see his face. ‘Thank you for the tip-off, Greta,’ he said. ‘If that’s all you’ve got to say you can get along back home. I must go and talk to my customers, and keep them amused. After all,’ he could not resist saying, ‘it’s through them you can have those trips to Paris, the clothes you are wearing and the perfume you are using. And don’t worry, Greta, I’m not going to let anyone else get me. You are so nice, Greta,’ he said, ‘to come home to.’
She stood at the door for a moment staring at him with those green eyes, no longer aflame now, but steady and cold. Then without a word she opened the door and went out.
As she closed the door Ray Mercury thought he caught a glimpse of Luke further along the passage, in an attitude as if he had been waiting for her.
Ray Mercury sat down at his desk, dragging thoughtfully at his cigar. The way she had acted to-night, that had come as a considerable shock to him. He hadn’t realized that she was taking it so badly about his affairs with the girls at his club. He hadn’t realized that she felt as she did about Julie Grayson. He wondered what she would do if she knew it wasn’t suicide, that Julie hadn’t been so infatuated with him that she wasn’t ready to go and yap to the police about what she had discovered about him.
He sat there wrapped in his thoughts. He didn’t look up when the door opened and he caught the sound of dance-music for a brief moment. He thought it was either Greta who had come back, or Luke. Not even when the door closed, shutting out the dance-music and the office was quiet again, cut off from the world the way he liked it, did he look up.
‘Hello, Ray.’
It was only then that his head jerked up and he saw who it was standing there. He didn’t get up, but sat staring at Thelma Grayson.
‘This is an unexpected pleasure,’ he said, one eyebrow raised.
‘For you it may be.’
She came towards him, and he said: ‘I didn’t expect to see you back at the club yet. I imagined you would want to stay away for a few more days, after what happened.’
‘Always so very considerate, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Julie was always telling me how considerate and thoughtful you were.’
He eyed her steadily. ‘You know as well as I do that there was nothing I could have done about it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t encourage her, it was just the way she felt for me.’
‘You’re a liar as well as a murderer,’ she said.
He started and then realizing she could not know anything, that she was only talking dramatically, he regained his poise quickly. The hand that raised his cigar to his mouth did not tremble.
‘You murdered her,’ he heard her voice going on, ‘Just as if you had strangled her with your own hands.’
She didn’t know anything. She still thought that her sister had committed suicide, and a sense of lightness filled him. He started to get up from the desk, but she stopped him.
‘Stay where you are,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to stand up just because I come into the room. You can save your little gentleman’s tricks.’
He sat still at his desk. ‘Now listen, Thelma,’ he said. ‘You should get a grip on yourself. Julie’s dead and I’m sorry about it.’
‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ she said, ‘ever since I saw her in the mortuary. And I’ve been looking forward to this moment.’
‘Incidentally, how the hell did you get in here?’ he said. ‘Who let you up?’
‘Nobody,’ she said. ‘There’s a key to that door to the yard at the back. I happened to get hold of it. Never mind how, I did. So nobody knows I’m here. Nobody saw me come in, nobody knows, Ray, except you and me. And only I will know when I go out.’
The tone in her voice suddenly sent a chill crawling under his scalp and down the back of his neck and down his spine. He rested his cigar on the edge of the ash-tray and he stood up from his chair.
‘What is this? Tell me what you want and then get out.’
‘It’s not so much what I want,’ she said. ‘But what you are going to get.’
His mouth opened in disbelief as he saw the bluish-black glint of the revolver that had appeared in her hand. His voice was thick with the beginnings of fear now. ‘Where did you get that damned gun?’
‘All you have to worry about is how I’m going to use it,’ she said. She moved forward a pace or two, the gun pointed at him, menacingly. ‘Stay where you are. Right behind that nice big desk of yours.’
His face had turned a sickly grey, he could feel his legs trembling. He formed words in his throat, but could not force them to his stiff lips.
‘Do you think you’re going to scare me?’ he heard himself say at last. ‘You’re not, Thelma. Don’t be a damn fool, put that gun away.’
She did not say anything. He saw no change in her expression, and his voice faltered as he sought wildly for something else to say.
‘Listen, I’m sorry about Julie. You know that. I didn’t kill her, it was terrible for her, I know, it was terrible for you too, but —’
‘And it’s going to be terrible for you,’ she said to him, between her teeth. ‘I can see her face now, as it was in the mortuary. You should have seen it, Ray,’ her voice rose with cold fury. ‘You should have seen your handiwork, all contorted and twisted with agony, her face was.’
‘Don’t, Thelma,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘Put that gun away and we’ll talk —’
Again she interrupted him, but this time it was the gun that spoke. There was an explosion like a door slamming, only twenty times as loud it seemed, and Ray Mercury’s eyes rolled upwards, and he stood there for a moment an expression of disbelief on his soft, white face, his mouth fell wide open. Then slowly he toppled forward and sprawled face downwards ac
ross the wide desk.
She stood staring at him, she put the Smith and Wesson slowly in her pocket and backed to the door. The gun going off must have sounded tremendously loud in the confined space of the room with its heavy, cigar-laden atmosphere, she thought.
She steeled herself for the noise of running feet, the shouts of alarm and the flinging open of the door. But there was no sound.
Stiffly and jerkily she turned to the door and opened it, there came the blare of dance-music, and she realized that only somebody standing right outside the door could have heard the shot in the sound-proof room. Without a glance behind her she went out of the office shutting the door. She walked along the passage to the iron staircase by which she had come. Nobody saw her, she closed the back door after her and she went down the steps quickly and silently into the darkness of the yard below.
Chapter Ten
For the rest of that day after he had returned to London, Phil Stone had drifted aimlessly around the town restless and dispirited, wondering what the future held for him, a future which seemed bleak and empty. He had gone as far as London Bridge, idly watching the shipping, the busy tugs and the swinging cranes. These were familiar sights to him and he found some comfort in the familiarity of the scene, it brought to him the breath of the sea, and gave him something solid and tangible for his thoughts to hang on to.
He went out to Deptford, past the docks and over Deptford Creek, and through Greenwich Foot Tunnel under the river to Cubitt Town and then back through a maze of streets to the ferry and over to Deptford again. Then on to Greenwich and the water front by the Royal Naval College, then to drift round the park, over to Blackheath, before heading back to the heart of London.
He had spent some time in his room in Baker Street, trying to read, to pass the hours with the newspapers, magazines and books, but he found it impossible to concentrate. All the time the words were jumbled before his eyes, as his thoughts continued to revolve round Julie and her death, and his mind dwelt on the life that might have been which he could have shared with her.
That evening of his return to London with Thelma Grayson, he went out to a nearby restaurant and ate a hurried meal, and then tried to lose himself in a cinema, but the figures on the screen and the voices that came to him meant nothing as he sat there in the darkness. It was only Julie’s face he saw, it was only Julie’s voice that he was remembering.
He found it unbearable, the stuffy, crowded darkness, and he hurried out to gulp the fresher air of the street. He roamed round the streets, went into one or two pubs. He avoided talking to anyone: he only wanted to be left alone with his deep grief.
Now he found himself in a little café in Greek Street, in the heart of Soho. He had just finished a meal of ravioli, and sat smoking a cigarette over a half-filled cup of coffee, he had been sitting there for a couple of hours. No one spoke to him here, no one tried to chat to him about the weather or anything else.
Now he knew all the time this was where his footsteps had been leading him. It was as if his wanderings had been nothing else but some subconscious effort to lead him to that very part of London which had kept drawing him like a compelling magnet. Drawing him closer, relentlessly drawing him to Soho. While all the time the conscious part of his brain had been urging him to keep away at all costs from that part of London where Ray Mercury and the Black Moth was.
On the bus, in the tube, while he had been in the cinema, or in his room trying to concentrate on a book or magazine, there had been at the back of his mind the memory of his conversation with Thelma Grayson in the train. He remembered the tone of her voice when she had tried to tell him that Ray Mercury had not been responsible for Julie’s death, that he had not driven her to death as surely as if he had murdered her with his own hands.
He was remembering the huge wreath of roses which had arrived for Julie’s coffin, and how he had hated the sight of the gorgeous flowers, he had struggled to prevent himself from tearing them to pieces; and how it was only Thelma telling him that Julie would have liked them that had prevented him from destroying them there and then.
‘It was an infatuation,’ he heard Thelma’s voice telling him once more. ‘She didn’t love him, if only you had been around it would never have happened.’ And then he remembered asking her why did she have to kill herself, and again her reply: ‘That we shall never know.’
What had lain behind that hint of evasiveness in her tone? It reminded him of the way she had greeted him when he had first arrived at the Charlotte Street flat. Then she had tried to conceal from him her anxiety for Julie. She had not wanted him to know about Julie and Ray Mercury. But in the train it had seemed that she was not entirely convinced of what she had told him, it was as if she was trying to save him from bringing trouble upon himself. It was as if she was trying to keep him away from Ray Mercury the man who had destroyed the girl he loved.
He glanced at his wrist-watch, it was nearly eleven o’clock, he threw a look round the little café with the chatter of foreign voices all around him, and then he pushed back his half-empty cup of coffee, got up and paid his bill at the door and went out into Greek Street.
With a vague idea that the Black Moth was further down the street he went on purposefully. From the shadows a tight-skirted figure with swaying hips approached with her softly-spoken invitation, and he brushed past her.
He paused on a corner to speak to an olive-skinned man and ask him to direct him to the Black Moth Club. The man told him in a thick accent, that it was further along, and that Phil would have to cross into Frith Street.
A few minutes later found Phil Stone passing Meard Street, turning into a small street, towards the end of which he could see the sign of the Black Moth. He walked slowly along trying to make up his mind what sort of action he intended to take once he got inside the place. He glanced down at his ordinary dark suit, he knew from what Thelma had told him that Ray Mercury catered for a clientele prepared to spend more on one evening’s entertainment than he would get in a whole month’s pay-packet.
As if to emphasize his own circumstances, a huge, shining limousine purred past and stopped, and he saw two men in evening dress get out of the car and go into the club, the burly figure of the commissionaire saluting them deferentially. Here, he decided, was the first obstacle he had to surmount, this six-footer, broad-shouldered with a battered face, and small eyes under scarred, thickened eyebrows, the commissionaire. The man was an ex-prize-fighter, it was written all over him.
The piggy eyes under the knitted brows fastened on him as he approached, and he could feel the commissionaire appraising him for what he was worth, and Phil realized that he did not look the sort of person who would be welcomed warmly at the Black Moth.
‘Good evening,’ he said politely. The other made no reply, only stared at him non-committally as Phil went on: ‘Mr. Mercury in the club to-night?’
‘Why, do you want to see him?’
‘That was the general idea,’ Phil said.
‘Does he know you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Got an appointment?’
‘Not exactly, but I thought that you and I might arrange that between us.’
Phil smiled and put his hand into his pocket, and drew out his note-case from which he pulled a ten-shilling note. The commissionaire’s attitude relaxed, in fact it softened considerably, the piggy eyes became less suspicious.
‘What do you want to see him about?’
‘Just a little private matter.’
‘You aren’t a newspaper reporter or something?’
‘No. I’m a friend of a friend of his.’
‘What’s the name of the friend?’
‘One of the girls working here.’
‘What girl?’
Still holding the ten-shilling note out, Phil Stone hesitated for a moment. Since he didn’t know the names of any of the other girls, he decided it was not any use trying to bluff. ‘Her name’s Thelma Grayson,’ he said.
The other conside
red this for a moment and then extended a thick hand. The stubby fingers closed over the ten shillings and transferred it to his hip-pocket.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘nip in. Ask one of the waiters if Mr. Mercury is downstairs, or if he is up in his office at the back of the Club.’
Phil grinned at him conspiratorially and went into the foyer; he could hear the sound of quiet dance-music beyond glass swing-doors, but he turned towards a short flight of thickly-carpeted stairs on his left. A waiter’s back was ahead of him and as the black-coated figure disappeared through the door and with a glance at the commissionaire, who was busily engaged in looking the other way, Phil went quickly and silently up the stairs.
Ray Mercury might be either downstairs or up in his private office, might he? Come to think of it, Phil thought that the quiet of his office, away from the sound of dance-music, hurrying waiters and people out for an evening’s entertainment, would be more suitable for what he had in mind. As he went on up, the curving staircase softly lit by bracketed lights on the walls, Phil turned over in his mind what precisely he was going to say to Ray Mercury. Should he hurl abuse at him, challenge him to settle it with bare fists there and then; or should he remain calm and cool, take it easy? But in that case, what would be the object of this call he was making? Mingled with these questions was the thought that the girl he loved had worked and danced here, at the Black Moth, and that the man he was about to confront face-to-face was the man who had brought about her death.
Now he had gained the top of the stairs and ahead of him was a softly-lit passage, with a thick carpet, and two doors, one on either side, and at the end a third door. Phil remembered the commissionaire saying that Ray Mercury’s office was the one at the back of the club, and his sense of direction told him that the door at the end was the one he was looking for.
Callers for Dr Morelle Page 7
